These are the female faces of the industry
Every Wednesday, in our popular “Faces of the Industry” series, individuals from the payments and banking industry answer our standardized questionnaire of ten questions each. Over the years, a large number of interesting answers have come together.
This series also features many great women in the industry whose ideas, vision and foresight are making a significant impact on the financial industry and driving the move towards greater diversity. Today there is a selection of their answers to the question: What can you learn from fintechs?
And here are their answers:
I can only speak from my experience at CrowdDesk, of course, and the following factors come to mind off the top of my head:
- The disruptive approach of our business model and the corporate mission known to everyone in our team ensure that every single employee thinks entrepreneurially and knows what goal is being worked towards
- As a FinTech, we think of financial services from the customer’s point of view and develop products that are geared to the customer and his needs.
- Many FinTechs are also startups – thanks to the flat hierarchies, employees have a high degree of autonomy and can tackle issues independently, quickly and easily. The often young employees in small teams are more curious, more creative and thus simply more agile and discover opportunities much faster as a result.
Kristin Baumhardt, Crowddesk
Decision-making, individual responsibility and working together to find solutions. Since the established structures are still partly missing and constant changes as well as a certain speed are part of everyday life, each individual has to take on more responsibility and make decisions in the interest of the company.
In order to then jointly develop innovative solutions, there can hardly be a “That won’t work!”, but rather it is a matter of developing an alternative path.
Carlotta Laetitia Mondino, finleap connect
Technology is typically at the heart of a FinTech, which means that its ability/flexibility to leverage the latest technologies without impacting the overall operation allows for faster time to market and shorter timelines. FinTechs tend to be more user-centric and experiment more to really meet user needs. I believe that a willingness to take risks and make adjustments through real-time feedback are key.
Katja Hunstock, finleap connect
The innovative, sometimes unconventional, creative and usually pragmatic approach that produces products and solutions that change the industry for good.
Juliane Schmitz Engels, Mastercard
Based on the latest technology, they offer services and product solutions that provide customers with a huge increase in their agility in the area of finance. Let’s just take the companies from the CFD association: With CFDs, investors have the opportunity to be active on the capital market with an innovative and transparent financial instrument – they can bet on rising and falling prices and do so in almost all conceivable asset classes, whether shares, bonds or commodities. This flexibility opens up completely new ways for them to secure their asset accumulation – a major advantage in times of turbulent financial markets.
Nazli Visne, IG Europe
Each individual in the team has a high degree of personal responsibility and can contribute his or her own ideas, which are then implemented. This allows us to work together as a team to develop innovative solutions and continually test new services and functions. In established companies, long decision-making processes and hierarchies usually slow down the ability to innovate.
Maria Mann, Financery
Meanwhile, FinTech solutions are part of every established institution, e.g., the financial services industry. as a payment service provider like Apple, UBER or IKEA. Business ecosystems are getting bigger, but there are few that can sustain customer relationships. FinTech solutions are now indispensable and must be part of the solutions that these companies offer their customers.
It’s not about one person having to be able to do everything, it’s about the right FinTech solutions being orchestrated in an ecosystem.
Ellen Kuder, Afterpay
If there’s one phrase I’m tired of hearing after 30 years in the financial industry, it’s, “But we’ve always done it that way.” And I think this is where established companies can learn from FinTechs. It’s also a lot about courage. The courage to think things through in a new way, to be a pioneer, but also to admit mistakes when in doubt.
Heike Schmitz, Environmental Bank
Courage. Otherness. Unconventional thinking paired with professionalism. Diversity. Impatience. Speed and flexibility. Diligence. Creativity and brainstorming. Openness to new impulses. And also (be allowed to) make mistakes, because “mistakes are proof that you are trying”.
What I also find exciting is that FinTechs are much more diverse. Not just in terms of the proportion of women, but overall. This is certainly helpful for the above points as well.
Dr. Lea Maria Sierung, finleap connect
Agility, customer focus and entrepreneurial spirit.
Eva-Maria Baumer, Ethoca
Episode 6: Strong women – strong voices!
Episode 5: Strong women – strong voices
